THE JEWS WITH CRUEL RIGOUR. 353 the regulations, by which they were obliged to confine themselves within particular towns and cities; and orders were forwarded to the sheriffs of the different places where they resided, to examine the registers of their debts and possessions, and make a faithful return of their estates and effects. As soon as the necessary information upon these orders was received from the sheriffs, a new tallage was imposed upon the Jews. The children began to be taxed as well as the parents, which made the tallage enormous; and authority was given to enforce the payment, together with that of all arrears due on former assessments, by measures of the greatest severity. The collectors were directed to levy the sums which were demanded, upon the goods and chattels of those who hesitated to contribute their proportion; and if the amount could not by this means be obtained-which, as a matter of course, proved those impoverished Jews to be useless, since everything, indeed, was taken from them -the king thought best to change the pu 354 COMPLAINTS MADE AGAINST THE JEWS. nishment from imprisonment to transportation. Accordingly, the sheriffs were empowered to punish the refractory (that is, those who had not money enough) with banishment from the kingdom; to imprison all such as common thieves, who should be found in the country after three days from the time they were, under these orders, directed to leave it; and the lands, houses, and effects of those who should be banished, were to be forthwith taken possession of and sold. The persons who were appointed to carry these directions into effect were, an Irish bishop Bishop elect of Waterfordand two friars; and they appear to have executed the office entrusted to them with such relentless severity, that the king's mind was moved to pity, and in many cases he gave orders to release particular individuals amongst the Jews from a part of the demands made upon them. The complaints which had been made, towards the end of the last reign, of the injuries which were experienced by the peo STATUTUM DE JUDAISMO. 555 ple in general, from the laws and proceedings respecting the Jews, it seems were now again brought forward. And the extent to which the Jews were permitted to take interest by the canon law, in order to fill the coffers of the king, was, it appears, also the subject of increased remonstrance. It must be borne in mind that the Gentiles were by far the greater usurers than the Jews, but they could practise the foul profession with impunity, by stating that they laboured for the pope for instance, in the thirty-sixth year of the preceding reign, Henry ordered that the Causini should be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law for their usuries; but they pleaded that they were the servants of the pope, and employed by him, and were therefore not only left alone, but countenanced in that nefarious traffic. In the third year of this reign, the king, in order to please his Christian subjects, was pleased to pass the statute which is known by the name of the STATUTUM DE JUDAISMO. This statute acknowledged that the king and his ancestors had had great profit from the Jews, yet that many mischiefs and disinheritances of honest men had happened by their usuries; and it therefore enacted, that from thenceforth no Jew should practise usury,— that no distress for any Jew's debt should be so grievous as not to leave the debtor the moiety of his lands and chattels for his subsistence; that no Jew should have power to sell or alien any house, rents, or tenements, without the king's leave, but that they might purchase houses in cities as heretofore, and take leases of land to farm for ten years; and that they should be at liberty to carry on mercantile transactions in the cities where they resided; provided, however, that they should not, by reason of such dealings, be talliable with the other inhabitants of the cities, seeing that they were only talliable to the king, as his own bondsmen ; and it directed that they should reside only in such cities and boroughs as were the king's own; and that all Jews above the age of seven years should wear a badge, in the form of two tables of yellow taffety,* upon their upper garments; and that all above twelve years of age should pay to the king, at Easter, the sum of three pence. Lord Coke recommends that statute as very worthy to be read. It was drawn up in French, and the following is an English translation of the same: "Whereas the king having observed, that * I should not wonder that some royal merchant arrived into this country to dispose of a certain quantity of yellow taffety, which perhaps not proving saleable, the merchant procured the interest of the king or that of his counsellors, and thus yellow taffety became the Jewish badge. C. White, in his "Three Years in Constantinople," relates a circumstance which gives colour to the above suggestion. He says "Sometimes French ambassadors carry their powers of protection to strange lengths, and apply them to singular purposes. It is related that one La Rose, first valet-de-chambre to M. d'Argental, in 1690, was persuaded by some one in Paris to lay out his savings in wigs, as a good speculation to take to Turkey. Finding, upon reaching Constantinople, that his stock remained on hand, and that he had been duped, he fell into low spirits, and had nigh died of despondency. The ambassador seeing this, bethought himself of applying to the grand vizir, to see if he could not devise some plan |